Lit New Darth Maul Novel

Dear lord... a new Darth Maul novel.... and by possibly the worst addition to the SW author roster in the past 5 years....

TFN's article: http://theforce.net/books/story/New_Darth_Maul_Novel_Announced_149950.asp

New Darth Maul Novel Announced

Posted By Eric on January 24, 2013

io9 got the exclusive reveal of a new Star Wars novel from Joe Schreiber called Star Wars: Maul: Lockdown. Here's the synopsis from their article:

From the mind of Joe Schreiber, New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Death Troopers, comes the delirious follow-up to last year's Darth Plagueis. In a tale of retribution and survival set before the events of The Phantom Menace, Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious dispatch Sith apprentice Darth Maul on a secret mission to infiltrate a criminal empire operating from inside Cog Hive Seven-a hidden prison teeming with the galaxy's most savage criminals. There, he must contend against the scummiest and most villainous in gladiatorial death matches while carrying out his masters' clandestine commands. Failure is not an option; success will ignite the revenge of the Sith against the Jedi Order.

Check out the cover art by clicking the thumbnail above. Maul: Lockdown is set for release "at the end of 2013."


Color me completely disinterested due to author alone.

Duplicate thread.

 

Reasons I have zero interest (in descension of reasoning):

1) Author
2) Darth Maul
3) Placement [combined with author] (I don't believe Schreiber can handle post-Plageuis era well, and this is a poor post-Plageuis novel, there's much better immediately there-after novels that could have worked)
4) Story - plot. What a horrible sounding plot. The Sith (through Sidious) need to take out a criminal empire, operating through a prison on some back-rock planet, that supposedly has the most savage criminals.... umm.... ....why? Especially since these will be all here-onto never seen before, so they've had no meta impact upon the universe unless stated otherwise in this novel. So their overarching empire seems extremely limited.
5) "Excitement factor" / "suspense". Basically, time-era, plus that its Darth Maul, really leaves little suspense. We know Darth Maul will survive, we know this will have very limited affect on a) the universe en-large, b) Darth Maul (since they couldn't even tie-this in with his TCW criminal empire building) and c) the upcoming Clone Wars/time-frame era. Most likely this will have zero impact on Sidious himself, and sounds more like a throw-away mission.

The assassin attacking can be exciting, and it worked with Maul's real, first novel. But, this novel here just lacks that completely. Maul tackling criminals in a prison? Yawn. You need an assassin to do that? A Sith Assassin at that?! Really? There's a whole HOST of ways Sidious could have taken care of these criminals (starting from the top of leveling the planet/prison through bombers, unless he wanted some saved, etc., bribing guards to kill inmates in their sleep, etc.)

Shadow Hunter worked, and gave us a counter-to-Maul that worked. Maul tracking down Jedi worked, and Pavan (non-Jedi) worked. Maul tracking down criminals in a prison, doesn't sound much like it will work. I'm assuming though this won't be a pure assassin mission, otherwise, like the above, bribing guards to kill inmates whilst they sleep would be common-sense, idea #1. So I'm assuming Sids/Palps is using some of the criminals for his benefit while killing others. Overall though, it sounds like it's a overtly-complicated for the pure-need of making it complicated novel, solely based on Maul's current fad and attempting to lock horns with him being amongst the fringe like he is in the show. Drawing on mass appeal, little substance, poor author, and a style and plot theme that I don't believe this author is capable of carrying out, leaves me so far beyond disinterested, it actually makes me a bit mad that this will take the place of a novel that we COULD have gotten instead.

 

...scummiest?

 

No soap for the prisoners to drop.

 

Isn't there already another thread about this where this has already been discussed? cough*Other Darth Maul Thread*Cough

 

Hmm... let me see... was this announced as being *THAT* new novel? Hmm... I don't believe so.
Was this just announced today - as the DARTH MAUL novel? Yes it has.

So if your browsing the forums, looking for information, are you going to click on "New Darth Maul Novel" or "New Novel" a thread that has been around for month(s), and is 14 pages, and 12 or so of the pages has just been fans speculating in a circle and making practical jokes and inside jokes and is premised on pure ambiguity to begin with? One massive spray-can of Ubik.

I'd rather go straight to a thread titled "new Darth Maul novel" rather than "New Novel" thats been around for a while and is ambiguous in nature.

 

I was really hoping that the follow-up to Plagueis would be a novel about Dooku's ambitions but I suppose this is still good news. I'm a little Maul-ed out right now but I greatly enjoyed Shadow Hunter and I'm excited to see what else Del Rey has in store for Maul.

 

Do people still care about Darth Maul?

 

The people that this is targeted to:

TCW watchers who don't care about hack-writers.

 

This is 1999, right?

This book sounds like an 80s action movie, which means I might love it.

 

Well, they said a cover had just been approved and they would reveal the new novel in a couple weeks, and then look, within a couple weeks, a new novel with cover was announced. It is not hard to put 2 and 2 together. And also, 99% of the time, it is not that hard for a mod to change the title of the thread, as is usually done in similar situations.

 

The threads will be merged regardless.

 

Let's see.... what would I rather have, 14 pages of gruff, rift-raft, side, worthless, discussion, or a concise, direct to the point, starting point for a thread?

I love to wade through 14 pages before getting to the actual gist of what the thread is meant to be about.

 

The thread New Novel is a couple weeks old, not months old. I made it when we only had news that a new book was coming out. Considering it said we would get news soon since they have a cover done I assume it would be this Darth Maul book.

 

As instantdeath pointed out, the threads will end up merged, so there will still be fourteen pages of "gruff, rift-raft, side, worthless, discussion" in the Maul: Lockdown thread.

 

This thread is classic Danz Borin.

 

I've been here less than 5 months and I have classics? Sweet.

 

On a semi related note, what was Maul up to for the years between 1 and the Clone Wars? Wouldn't that make far more sense?

 

He was just being a stupid robot spider and eating rats in a sewer somewhere.

Actually I would rather have a book about that.

 

I am very excited over this Do I think this will be better then Shadow Hunter?Probably not.

 

Shadow Hunter was great because of Neimoidians, Sidious, Coruscant underlevels, setting just before TPM and links to it. And it was great. If this is half as good it will be good. But as others have said, this doesn't really offer anything big. Unless it's retconned later to be something more important (that would have happened in Darth Plagueis if it was written after), this crime organization doesn't have any effect on the galaxy. Interesting that this story would have had every attribute of a paperback: Straightforward plot, a fan-favourite character doing what he knows to do, not much wider impact to the galaxy. Well, paperback is how I'm going to read it.
Hopefully Plagueis has a little larger role than that Sidious usually has in Maul stories, just giving the mission in the first chapter and giving a lesson in the end.

Something I wonder: If this so clearly is a Darth Maul pre-TPM novel, why is it named Maul: Lockdown instead of Darth Maul: Lockdown, as the first novel and the short stories were?

And for those that said that this news was underwhelming after all the hype, well that was our hype. All we got from Heddle was that we don't know anything of this novel and she's excited for it. Of course she is excited, something would be wrong if she wasn't. But then we had to bring up Stover, Luceno, Imperial Commando, Sequel to Plagueis, Bib Fortuna and Ackbar vs. Pellaeon, and how can we not be underwhelmed?

 

My gues is because this will be timed before Maul pased his final trial to become a Sith lord.Therefor he didnt got his Darth title yet.

 

That was the first thought that came to my mind too.

 

That makes sense. I searched Wrath of Darth Maul and found this:

After those two years, Maul spent 14 days on Mustafar testing his will and strength, and then he was sent to Hypori for his Sith Lord test. So this novel could well be set during those two years.